Oliver Stone interviews Putin for Showtime documentary

BY MEREDITH BLAKELOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS)

Interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin, conducted by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone, will air in a four-hour documentary that is set to air on Showtime on four consecutive nights beginning June 12.

“The Putin Interviews” is culled from a series of a dozen interviews conducted by Stone with assistance from producer Fernando Sulichin.

The most recent interview was recorded in February, after the U.S. election and President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The film will touch on allegations of Russian interference in the presidential election, the Kremlin’s role in Syria and Ukraine, as well as the increasingly adversarial relationship between the United States and Russia, Showtime said in a news release.

“If Vladimir Putin is indeed the great enemy of the United States, then at least we should try to understand him,” Stone said in the announcement.

The announcement said other subjects to be discussed include Putin’s “personal relationships” with Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama and Trump, as well as the surveillance state and fugitive National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s flight to asylum in Moscow.

Though he is best known for politically charged narrative films such as “J.F.K.” and “Platoon,” Stone has also made a number of documentaries about controversial political figures, including a series of films about Fidel Castro.